Fox news

“In Leos Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, the heroine is shot and skinned for her fur. A disturbing conclusion, yes, but also a happy ending, as the exultant music of this 1924 fantasy proves: Though one fox dies, her offspring and the rest of nature continue to thrive forever.” [New York Post]

8 comments

Quanto Painy Fakorsays:

Nice review! Can’t wait to see how TT describes the ” Forester, sung in a big, muscular bass-baritone”

(This is not a criticism of JJ.) “Later, the vixen takes up with a sexy male fox, clarion-voiced soprano…” go figure! I can only imagine what someone who does not understand that these things are normal in operas will make of that one.

“Yveta Synek Graff’s revised libretto” -- I trust that means that Ms. Graff or the director revised Ms Graff’s already successful translation. Or did they revise things to justify their lack of animal costumes? Were the hens also in summer frocks?
Aufgepasst!

To my mind, this is also true of “The Makropulos Case” and “From the House of the Dead”. I am hard pressed to name a composer who shows more compassion for his characters -- all of them, major or minor, good or bad -- than Janacek.

Or maybe it’s “elicits more compassion for his characters”. I’m not sure I can tell which.